Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is a management approach and comprises the holistic management of all data and information that is processed and distributed when developing new products or updating existing ones. PLM also includes the ability to manage and control the process of editing and distributing information across companies. A PLM solution results from the interaction of people, working methods, models and IT tools.
In today's world, the implementation of an efficient product lifecycle management system is becoming increasingly important in order to remain competitive. HELiOS as a multi-CAD capable PDM system suitable for article-oriented work offers you the urgently needed central tool for the unification of different information-related, isolated solutions in your company and for the consistent and access controlled data flow throughout your company along the entire product life cycle.
PLM means for us to be able to provide every authorized person with any information regarding a product in its product life cycle consistently by means of automated data synchronization without having to manually and redundantly create it in the company. PLM is therefore not a pure software module, but a corporate strategy that integrates HELiOS at its core.
The advantages of PLM as a corporate strategy are almost innumerable and become apparent in the most diverse forms, depending on company-specific circumstances. But how does HELiOS support you in establishing such an efficient corporate strategy ?
While the engineering department often thinks in terms of drawing numbers, the materials management as well as any other department usually works on the basis of articles. By linking article master data with the respective drawings and geometries, these two large company departments are united and made compatible for each other. In this way, product structures are created in the PDM/PLM system HELiOS from the CAD-relevant and non-CAD-relevant articles, which are automatically transferred to your ERP system via an interface, in order to prepare them there for any type of BOM.
A manual assignment of CAD data to articles and the time-consuming entering of the BOMs into the ERP are no longer necessary. This not only saves you a lot of time, but also minimizes the susceptibility to errors and optimizes the mapping of the entire product life cycle. A company-wide information model of your products can thus be mapped easily and flexibly - resulting in enormous savings potential and productivity increases.
As a CAD and PDM solution provider for the entire process management, however, we do not reduce a company to the engineering department alone. The future-oriented way lies, across all departments, in data management and process safety. The workflow-controlled folder (digital folder) from HELiOS is of great help here. The intuitive administration tools allow you to define role workflows for your company processes, which, together with the assigning of access rights, regulate, simplify and accelerate the daily exchange of documents between all departments. Automatic E-mails can be sent or template documents can be created and provided. Optimize your order processing and provide production documents without printing them - directly where they are needed, at the respective workplace in the respective department.
Feedback from our customers clearly shows that enormous time savings are possible here, which shortens the project lead time and creates space for other tasks.
Wächter Packautomatik GmbH & Co. KG
„We are happy that we were able to seamlessly interface our ERP system with HELiOS. The data is automatically synchronized. This saves time and reduces errors caused by different versions that would otherwise still be in circulation, and prevents data loss due to incorrect forwarding between departments.“
Robert Förster, CAD-responsible Project Manager
Ingenieurbüro Dipl. Ing. Gronow
„lthough we are not a large company using HELiOS's workflows, since only one designer works on the current project at a time, we are able to use the HELiOS system for all our projects. However, we are dependent on a secure document management system using systematic folders and subfolders that update automatically.“
Holger Gronow, General Manager
SIVAplan GmbH
„As a customer we benefit from the possibilities that only a manufacturer can offer: Further developments and implementations on customer request. This has enabled us to optimise our processes even further and the ISD uses the know-how from the daily use of the solution for its further enhancement of the PDM software HELiOS.“
Daniel Althaus, Mechanical Design
Bernard van Lengerich Maschinenfabrik GmbH & Co. KG
„CAD-generated drawings must also be managed. So HELiOS was added in the course of the HiCAD introduction. Our decision was supported by the fact that both programs come from one developer and are perfectly coordinated. The fact that the ISD is a German developer also favoured our choice.“
Thomas Vietz, System Administrator
MBS Hydraulik GmbH & Co. KG
„Time that is saved by using HELiOS is immediately used for other activities - for essential design processes. Especially when entering master data, a lot of time is saved, as this data is now directly attached to the article and does not have to be re-entered when it is reused.“
Kai Ellerbrock, Programmer
Wächter Packautomatik GmbH & Co. KG
„By using the PDM software HELiOS, the search effort for parts, assemblies or documents could be greatly reduced. The daily management of documents has become much clearer, easier and more structured.“
Robert Förster, Chief Designer
In the face of a huge flood of information and new technologies, more and more companies are turning to data integration in engineering to make efficient and effective use of data. This means that this data can be made available not only to different people, but also in different systems. This simplifies and automates workflows and saves time, money and effort for the company.
HELiOS can be easily integrated into the existing IT structure of your company. With the standardized interfaces to the most diverse software components, information can be managed directly at the point where it is created.
With HELiOS, efficient CAD data management is possible for common systems such as HiCAD, AutoCAD and Inventor: You will know exactly who, when and what has changed and immediately recognize the effects on other products.
With the ECAD interface EPLAN, documents can be managed centrally and parts and BOM data exchanged.
Due to its open concept, HELiOS is ideally suited as an integral part of PLM concepts. This is also reflected in the growing number of ERP interfaces at our customers' companies.
Many of a company's product information is created outside of CAD and PDM in the various application systems of Microsoft® Office. These data and documents - such as texts, spreadsheets or E-mails - can also be directly integrated into the product model managed with HELiOS via an interface to Microsoft® Office.
